Origin of cometary extended sources from degradation of refractory organics on grains: polyoxymethylene as formaldehyde parent molecule

The radial distribution of some molecules (CO, H2CO, HNC, …) observed in the coma of some comets cannot be explained only by a direct sublimation from the nucleus, or by the photolysis of a detected parent compound. Such molecules present a so-called extended source in comae. We show in this paper that extended sources can be explained by refractory organic material slowly releasing gas from grains ejected from the cometary nucleus, due to solar UV photons or heat. The degradation products are produced throughout the coma and therefore are presenting an extended distribution. To model this multiphase chemistry we derive new equations, which are applied to Comet 1P/Halley for the case of the production of formaldehyde from polyoxymethylene (POM), the polymer of formaldehyde (–CH2–O–)n. We show that the presence of a few percent of POM on cometary grains (a nominal value of ∼4% in mass of grains is derived from our calculations) is in good agreement with the observed distribution, which so far were not interpreted by the presence of any gaseous parent molecule.